


ΔUTOMΔTIC

by thewinterking



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cars, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, M/M, Masochism, Mildly Dubious Consent, Panic Attacks, Sadism, crimewatch, gabriel is a bad man, let reaper be bad, neon noir, sensationalized crime, sensationalized violence, unbetad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 02:23:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14149878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewinterking/pseuds/thewinterking
Summary: “You’re coming apart.”Jack wheels around, knocking into the armchair. It skids forward and takes a corner of the carpet with it.  Something ugly flickers over his face, knitting his brows together and twisting his mouth cruelly. Unbridled anger. Pure disgust.For the second time tonight, Gabriel feels a pang of want.





	ΔUTOMΔTIC

**Author's Note:**

> some ideas here were cut from the devil’s due, which is on hiatus. none of these scenes are directly taken from that, and this is a standalone project. this fic uses grand theft auto logic here. this is unbeta'd and largely unedited.

 

 

It’s the exact kind of operation he didn’t want a newcomer for. Gabriel twists in the passenger seat and stares down Jack Morrison. Street lights pass over the windshield in a series of bright flashes, too quick to properly study his face. But, if he wears fear or veiled rage, it doesn’t matter. Gabriel sees what he needs to see.

Jack’s hands are wrapped in leather gloves and tight over the steering wheel. They never falter — not even under a bombardment of gunfire. The car twists around a corner and accelerates past slowing traffic, smooth and seamless.

“Boss,” comes a low, breathless voice from behind him. Gabriel jerks around and leans over the middle armrest. Cramped across one backseat sits two of his teammates: Jesse and Sombra. The third sprawls over their laps, sallow-skinned and gasping.

Genji Shimada. His blood is everywhere: on the window, on their hands, and drenching their laps. Every attempt to stop his bubbling chest wound has failed. Jesse presses his jacket tight over the worst of it, but red seeps past the material.

Weakly, Genji lifts a hand to blindly help or maybe to feel the mangled site. A moan warbles past the line of his lips — a word or a phrase Gabriel has to strain to hear. He never gets the chance. Sombra knocks Genji’s hands down and kneels unevenly on the seat. Her fingers work crookedly over the jacket like she’s doing more than she is.

Neither of them have accepted what Gabriel knew the second Genji took two shots to the chest. He’s dead. A man can only lose so much blood, and the backseat is drowning in it.

“Boss. _Reyes,_ ” Jesse rasps. “We gotta get him to a hospital — make him take us to a hospital!”

Jack cants his head. His eyes never leave the road: he’s listening for the order.

Gabriel’s teeth clamp down in his mouth, set and sharp behind the line of his lips. His fingers tighten over the hilt of the gun in his hand. Jesse knows how these operations work. There are always contingency plans when things go wrong. But, staring down his team and telling them they’ll split the money _four_ ways and not _five_ feels callous.

“Stick to the plan,” he orders instead.

“Bullshit, Reyes —” Jesse snarls. “He’s _dyin’._ ”

“He knew the risks.”

Sombra cuts in before Jesse gets the chance. “Gonna deliver his body back to Shimada, then? You think that wins us any favors?”

“I don’t —”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish. Traffic lights pass over them in a haze of emerald and suddenly someone gasps out. The car lurches dramatically to the left and Gabriel turns just in time to see a SUV narrowly miss them.

Cadillac. Black. Tinted windows. The Shimada-gumi.

“Shit,” he swears, softer than Sombra’s cursing onslaught.

Jack twists the wheel, sending the car left down a two lane road. Tires squeal behind them as the SUV loops around, and then the chase is on.

The Mitsubishi Lancer they’re in is faster than the Escalade. They have time to get away.

But, weaving past a stop sign and accelerating toward another intersection, three more Escalades burst into view. They form a wall blocking any through traffic, and worse yet, their windows are down. Men and women alike surge halfway out from each vehicle, arms extended, guns raised.

“ _GET DOWN!_ ” Gabriel shouts, hunkering into his seat.

Only one fails to obey the order. From his slumped spot, Gabriel looks up and finally sees what a lack of light obscured: Jack stares past the windshield like he’s unaware of anything but the road. His blue eyes narrow and crinkle at the corners. His jaw sets tight enough to strain a tendon in his cheek.

Gabriel thinks, _‘he looks good_ ,’ and then a sharp right has him nearly colliding into the dashboard. His hands grapple out, clutching armrest and door. Wherever they’ve turned, it’s dark without the luxury of street lights.

“Service street,” Jack supplies.

Gabriel sinks back into his seat and takes in the narrow road. Two buildings bracket them, vaulting high enough into the sky that the city lights don’t find them here.

But, the Shimada do. Their headlights flare to life behind them, bathing them in gold.

“Sombra, keep the pressure on that wound. Jesse, get your gun and let’s go.”

Both snap into action, but it’s Jack that finally tears looks at Gabriel with wide, accusing eyes. “I said no shooting from the car. You agreed! You fucking agreed —”

Gabriel tosses him a wry smile and turns his attention onto the gun, snapping in a fresh magazine. “I think I called this a low-risk operation, too.”

Behind them, Jesse rolls down his passenger window. Gabriel follows suit.

“You won’t have your clean getaway if you leave a trail of bodies in your wake!”

The Lancer bursts out onto the surface street and swings left.

“Anything about this clean?” Gabriel levels Jack’s way. “Keep the car steady.”

In unison, Gabriel and Jesse pull themselves halfway out their windows and sit on the narrow frame. Gabriel takes the left side of the car; Jesse takes the right.

Sombra says something from inside and Jack gruffly responds, but he can’t make out any of it. Hoisted here, his attention falls on the Escalades barreling toward them. On cue, their windows slide down. They, too, try to clamber out for a good shot.

Jesse’s gun pops three times, rapid fire. Each man — no more than targets in his mind — slumps on impact, painting the door’s finish red.

They could be at this all night and Jesse would cut down every last Yakuza that so much as glanced out their window. But, while Jesse stays his hand and waits for their next move, Gabriel levels his gun at the driver.

“I can get the tires —” Jesse starts to say, but Gabriel pulls the trigger.

The Cadillac's windshield splinters in a web of cracked glass streaking with blood. Gabriel lines up his next mark, but this driver panics. They twist the wheel so hard it goes slamming into the other Escalade. From there, it’s a chain reaction. The third SUV swerves to get out of the way and slams into a car parked along the road. The _crunch_ of metal is almost deafening.

Both men slide back into the Lancer and lower their guns. There are police cars with wailing sirens that try to follow them for a three mile stretch, but Jack, silent as the grave, gets them clear.

By some miracle, Genji isn’t dead when they get him to the clinic. Winston scrambles to carry him inside while Angela rushes to follow suit. Whether he lives or dies now is in their hands.

No one says a word when the Lancer pulls into the garage of Gabriel’s hillside home. Overhead, fluorescent lights snap on and chase away the veil of night. Somehow, the tension in the car grows worse. Jesse peels out the side door before Jack comes to a stop. Sombra follows suit, but unlike him she does not stomp and storm into the house. Her eyes cut Gabriel’s way and immediately he knows there’s a private conversation coming in the near future.

Jack pulls into a free space — one of six — and shuts the car off. Behind them, the garage door rolls down and shuts.

Neither one of them move.

When the lights cut to black, Gabriel draws a ragged breath.

Jack cuts him off first. “I could have pulled over, ditched the car and all of you with it.”

Gabriel glances his way. Jack’s hands haven’t left the steering wheel. With a tight smile, he sinks back into his seat and folds his locked fingers over his chest. If Jack wants to exchange threats, Gabriel has no problem playing along.

“You would’ve been dead before you hit the curb.”

“Yeah?” Jack lashes. “That shit work for you, Reyes? Letting someone on your team bleed out, and… threatening your driver, does that fuckin’ work?”

“You’re rattled.”

“I’m fine.”

“Your hands are shaking.”

Jack pulls them from the steering wheel as if scalded. They hang in the air for three long seconds; it takes Jack that long to realize Gabriel’s telling the truth. The worn leather creaks weakly as his fingers curl into his palm. He tugs them to his chest and holds them there.

There’s a new look — one Gabriel hasn’t cataloged. Jack stares with wide eyes and lips parted imperceptibly. The edge of his eyebrow ticks, caught somewhere between rising to his hairline and scrunching when he inevitably squeezes his eyes shut.

Gabriel drinks it all in: the disheveled sweep of his hair, his hunched shoulders, the bob in his throat.

 _Which of it bothers him_ , Gabriel wonders, _which part of it really bothers him?_

Gabriel means to ask. He gets out a sound — the start of a callous question — but the house door swings wide. Jesse’s broad silhouette pushes from the frame and surges past his work shelf. He’s changed his shirt. Red no longer splashes down his front, but even at this distance Gabriel can spot the stain on his hands.

“Jesse,” he calls, pushing from the car.

Jesse doesn’t answer. He blindly snatches a key-chain from the wall and heads toward the Ford — a diesel truck squeezed between the lane of cars.

“McCree!” he snarls, slamming the Lancer’s door. “Where the fuck are you going?”

“Out.” The keys rattle in Jesse’s hand as he jams one into the car door; it doesn’t slide in, no matter how many times he tries it.

Gabriel swings around the Lancer. “You’re not going out.”

Jesse jerks his head up, whipping his hair from his face. There’s blood on his cheek, too. “You gonna fuckin’ stop me, Boss?”

“The Shimada-gumi are out for blood. They don’t need any more than they got.”

Gabriel can _hear_ the new scratches left in his door; one squeaks long enough he suspects one white line now runs under the handle. He dashes forward past the work shelf, ready to sprint and stop him.

Jesse clambers with the keys until he finds the automatic unlock button. The lights of the red Aston Martin, parked on the other end of the garage, flash twice. Jesse spits out a sigh and tears away from the truck.

“You listening to what I’m saying?”

“Fuck off.”

“Give me the fucking keys —”

With anyone else, Gabriel’s sharp grab might stop them in their tracks. Jesse’s just as big as him, though, and it’s an outdated maneuver. One he’s used before.  He tears free and shoves past Gabriel, closing in on the Aston Martin.

“Driver of yours is real quiet,” Jesse throws his way, lip curled and teeth bared. “You tyin’ up loose ends? Need to drop him in a ditch, too? Got some other pit stop in mind to dump the body?”

Gabriel has no clever response or chilling retort, and Jesse doesn’t wait to hear him come up with one. The car’s headlights are temporary blinding, whiting out the garage for three long seconds. He blinks back his sight, fighting off the black spots that edge into view. By the time he’s clear, the car’s gone; it’s a mile down the road before the tires stop squealing.

 _He’s gonna get himself killed,_  thinks Gabriel spitefully. Then, with more anger, _he’s going to get us caught._

There’s no time to dwell on the thought or what he’ll do when McCree shows his face around here again. Another door is opening and closing. This time it’s Jack, getting from the driver’s seat.

Gabriel can’t tell if his hands are still shaking, but he’s blanched white and that means he heard everything.

Jack says nothing. He reaches up slowly and scrubs the back of his gloved hand across his mouth. He thinks he can hide his expression that way.

“Get inside,” Gabriel orders, deceptively soft.

“Think McCree has the right idea. Maybe it’s best if we split up —”

“Get inside,” Gabriel orders again, replacing velvet with ice.

Jack gives one last look down the wide driveway. He lowers his hand at last, and heads for the house door.

Gabriel follows on his heel, herding him inside.

Jack doesn’t ask where he’s supposed to go and Gabriel doesn’t bother telling him. He shadows him through the living room and hall. The threat of contact keeps Jack moving, always a half-step from brushing back into Gabriel’s broad chest.

Up the winding stairs. Down the hall. To the darkened end, where two double doors stand shut.

The sight shakes Jack from his obedient stupor. His breath picks up, rattling noisily in his throat.

“What is this, Reyes?”

“Inside.”  
  
“Hey, no — no, fuck that,” he chokes out breathlessly. “What the fuck is this?”

Gabriel plants a hand on Jack’s shoulder and each finger finds a home buried in leather.  Jack goes tense under his touch, but he doesn’t squirm away. His spine straightens and his shoulders pull back reflexively. His hands have stopped curling into a ball.

There’s something to be gleaned in that. Gabriel takes a mental note and leads Jack forward until they’re at the doors. The handles jiggle frantically under his nervous grab, but they eventually give and both men pour into the room.

Jack staggers over the carpet and catches himself on a chair. Gabriel follows without fault, closing both doors behind him.

His bedroom is, like the very house itself, post-modern design that’s known one or two renovations and redesigns. The far wall, which spans the length of the room, has windows instead of wood. Each starts at the edge of the floor and carries up to the ceiling, and each fits together seamlessly.

There’s only the hills on the other side of it — rolling green acres left purposely untouched. If you stand at the edge of the room, you can peek rows of houses down in the valley, all lit up in gold.

Jack picks himself off the armchair slowly and takes it all in. The bed to his far right, the glass fireplace, the doorway leading to a closet and bathroom. Gabriel counts the seconds it takes for Jack to realize this isn’t a guest room.

He gets to four.

“I’m listening. Whatever you wanna say or — I was listening downstairs, I listened in the car, didn’t I? What the fuck is this?”

Gabriel stays rooted before the double doors, a sentry to any plan Jack tries to put in motion. One person in a clinic and another running rogue on the streets is more chaos than Gabriel needs. He won’t let Jack contribute to more.

“You’re coming apart.”

Jack wheels around, knocking into the armchair. It skids forward and takes a corner of the carpet with it. Something ugly flickers over his face, knitting his brows together and twisting his mouth cruelly. Unbridled anger. Pure disgust.

For the second time tonight, Gabriel feels a pang of want.

It doesn’t last. Jack’s nostrils flare as he takes in a deep breath, but he chokes on it and the whole image of him crumbles part. His shoulders shudder. The tendons in his throat strain as he gasps for a second breath.

“You _killed_ people on the street — you fuckin’ murdered people out in the open — you were gonna let that kid die, too, you —”

“What was the viable option, Morrison?” Gabriel interrupts smoothly. No emotion colors his voice.

“Not that, who the fuck does that — I didn’t agree to that!”

Gabriel’s shoes click softly against the wood floors as he spans the distance between them. He takes his time with each step, knowing if he approaches too quickly that Jack will bolt like the frightened animal he is.

“What were the viable options,” he repeats languidly. “Let them chase us to Sacramento and back? Let them cause enough chaos dogging us that the cops get us, too? Which of those sounds good, Morrison?”

“It didn’t — have — to be like — that…”

Jack sags into himself, and his chest doesn’t stop its rapid rise and fall. He grapples back blindly for the armchair, desperate for something to prop against.

Gabriel knows a panic attack when he sees it, and Jack’s teetering on the brink. A kinder man would diffuse the situation, but Gabriel is not a kind man.

“... As for Genji, you had the power to take that car anywhere you wanted. You didn’t.”

“Shut up —”

Gabriel stands close enough to smell the sweat rolling off Jack’s neck. He goes for his arm. He wants to pull him in, wants to sneer the words, “You’re just as bad as _me,_ _”_ right in his frightened face, but he underestimates Jack.

Jack throws off his hands not bodily like McCree, with three deliberate actions. Jack rolls from the snag and palms his wrist away fluidly. It’s a clean move for someone piecing apart and staggering toward his bathroom.

Gabriel follows, throwing the words at his back. Jack probably doesn’t even hear them now; he probably can’t hear much over the noise of his own shuddering gasps.

Jack grabs the frame of the door and swings himself into the dark bathroom. The faucet runs, and the snaps of his leather gloves come undone. Gabriel finds him doubled over the counter, trembling like he was wounded by a slug out there.

He steps into the frame and finds the light switch. It clicks audibly and suddenly white fluorescent light floods the space. Everything is too bright at once. Light bounces off the white tile and marble counters, illuminating every scar, pockmark and baggy eye Jack Morrison has.

He picks his wet face up from the sink. Splashing water has done nothing to calm him down. He looks worse now. His hairline is soaked and sticking at odd angles. His eyes look just as wet as his skin.

Gabriel steps inside and Jack reacts like he’s pulled out a gun. He wheels around and his bare hands dig into the counter for support. It leaves his elbows jutting backwards at an awkward angle, but he doesn’t relent.

“You told me you were a soldier, Morrison.”

“I was —”

One loping stride crosses the distance between them. Gabriel hooks his hand under Jack’s chin. His fingers and thumb dig into his cheeks, squeezing his face tight between them. Jack has to crane up with it and that leaves them inches apart.

Every puffing breath gusts against Gabriel’s mouth. The tears in Jack’s eyes look ready to spill over.

“Then —" Gabriel starts to say, but he doesn’t get the chance to finish.

“Don’t,” he croaks.

“Don’t what?” Gabriel demands. His fingers pry deeper; he wants to see that tear fall.

“Don’t kiss me,” Jack blurts out. “Don’t kiss me, you can’t, please, you can’t —”

The plea startles him worse than any bullet or whooping siren. Gabriel rips his hand away and the whole motion puts space between them again. His eyes blow wide. He thinks he means to say something, because his lips are parted, but he finds he has nothing to say.

Jack realizes his error in the fractions of a second. The back of his hand snaps to his mouth, but it doesn’t hide what he understands too late: that Gabriel wasn’t going to kiss him, that he wasn’t thinking of kissing him, that none of this was about intimacy.

He wheels around and faces the counter, only now he dips his head so low that Gabriel can’t make out his face anymore.

There’s an instinct in him somewhere to take Jack by the hair — to crane his head up and really study his face, and what he’s feeling, and what he’s _thinking —_   but, Gabriel only splays his hands out and leaves them empty.

“Get yourself cleaned up,” he rasps, rougher than he expects. “Take the bed for the night.”

If Jack wants to say something in turn, he doesn’t get the chance. Gabriel spins on his heel and flees the room as fast as his legs will take him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is a happy house, we're happy here, in a happy house. oh this is fun. 


End file.
